Doist is the company behind popular productivity tools like Todoist and Twist, which millions worldwide use. Founded in 2007 by Amir Salihefendic, Doist has grown into a global powerhouse in the productivity and work management space with a 100% distributed team.
A bootstrapped company, Doist stands out for its unique approach to work, product development, and company culture. The company was an early adopter of remote work, embracing distributed work as far back as 2010, which allowed Doist to tap into a global talent pool and build a diverse team long before remote work became mainstream.
Doist consistently challenges the status quo and applies first-principles thinking to its operations and product development. The company is known for its focus on craftsmanship and mastery, emphasizing quality, precision, and attention to detail in everything it does.
Doist promotes a culture of intense focus and intentionality while working, followed by dedicated time for rest and recharge. This approach, inspired by the training regimens of top athletes, recognizes the importance of ambition and balance for long-term success and well-being.
Doist’s journey and philosophy offer valuable insights for anyone interested in building and scaling successful products and building enduring ventures in a competitive market. The company's bootstrapped success in a crowded space like productivity software shows the power of a strong product vision, a commitment to excellence, and the first principle approach to company building.
In this article, we pull 10 business, management, strategy, and growth lessons from Doist based on its founder and CEO Amir Salihefendic’s interview with Future Startup published last year.
I. Think from first principles, challenge the status quo, and do things differently. In the interview, Amir attributes much of the Doist's success to thinking from first principles and doing things differently. It is often easy and tempting to follow the well-established norm. However, blindly following established practices can lead to stagnation and missed opportunities. Doist, as a company, has always followed a first-principle approach. The company adopted remote work in 2010 before it became popular. It is the same for asynchronous communication. Doist’s culture around mastery and craftsmanship also provides insight into the unconventional culture of the company.
“Something that's worked is the thinking from the first principle, challenging the status quo, and doing things differently instead of doing the playbook that everybody else is doing. That has allowed us to build a competitive advantage over the years. To give you an example, we started working remotely over a decade ago in 2010. When we started doing it, nobody was even talking about it. It was a super niche phenomenon. You probably had a few companies all over the world that were remote-first at that time. That move gave us a huge advantage. Suddenly we could hire smart people from all around the world. We didn't need to pay Silicon Valley salaries to do that.”
II. Don't be complacent. Continuously strive for growth and improvement. Complacency can be the downfall of a company. Always look for ways to innovate and stay ahead of the competition.
“Ambition could be something that can drive us forward. For instance, if you're a tech worker, and you have a good salary, and a good job, you may try to find a bigger goal because I think it makes life much more interesting. The critical point is not being complacent in anything. This goes for companies, teams, or societies as well. Once you become complacent, once you become satisfied with the status quo, you can count it as a signal for your downturn.” [....] “Once you become complacent about a situation, it is probably the death of the company, because the competition is so high. And you have some people who are just much more hungry than you are and after some years you can simply lose everything. That's something that I'm careful about. I don’t want to become complacent.”
III. Focus on building a great product that people love. Doist’s success is largely due to its focus on building high-quality, user-friendly products like Todoist.
“This idea of competition I think is kind of flawed. I don't think much about competition. I'm just focused on our execution, creating something that people love, and also being passionate about what we do. Because I think that's what matters at the end of the day. The other aspects like craftsmanship and mastery are super critical as well. In technology and many other fields, it's not about capital or how many people you have or resources you have. If it was, you would not be able to compete with super-rich companies, or with companies that have a lot of people. I think you can be a smaller company and still compete because being small has a lot of leverage. A lot of the time, you can be more efficient being a smaller, nimbler company.”
IV. Hire the right people who are passionate about their craft and have a growth mindset. Doist prioritizes hiring people who are skilled, motivated, and aligned with the company's values.
“Early people are super important for your culture. They form the nucleus of your culture. A lot of the early people that we hired were focused on the craft and becoming better. They wanted to build something they could be proud of. That has kind of sustained over the years. All the people that we have hired are people who care about the mastery of their craft, who want to build something great, and who want to make products that people want to use. I would say that's the short story. We started with this small nucleus, and it has kind of grown.”
V. Optimize for the long term. Amir emphasizes building a sustainable business for the long haul, rather than chasing short-term gains.
“The other aspect is the intensity aspect and aspects like stamina, and being able to do this for a long time. On Todoist, I've been working for 15 years now. In the tech sector, most founders have never worked on something for so long. I'm willing to spend the rest of my life on this. That is an aspect for which I try to optimize. I try to optimize for the long term — how can I sustain this for the next 30 years? These are the two aspects of that. The other aspects are thinking from first principles and trying to challenge the status quo. For instance, moving more into asynchronous work, more writing than talking in meetings, etc. These are also tools you can use to become more productive.”
VI. Build a strong company culture based on shared values. Doist’s values, such as mastery and craftsmanship, are ingrained in its culture.
“That's definitely a challenging thing for companies — building culture, growing the culture, and evolving the culture. Culture isn't static. It changes over time. It changes when a company grows. And sometimes it changes for the worse. As a founder, you need to always be thinking about that. Like I said before, the initial hires are critical because that's your nucleus. You need to be careful about who you hire because then we can define the culture going forward. As you evolve, you need to document the culture. It becomes much more critical. For instance, we have a core values document, which is ingrained in lots of what we do.”
VII. Create a clear and motivating mission statement. This gives employees a sense of purpose and helps to align everyone around a common goal.
“Another aspect connected to the culture and the core values is the mission — the higher purpose of the company. If you can't define that, it will be hard to define the other parts or find silver linings for all parts. Some companies just have stupid mission statements. They're not motivating, or it's not something that you can aspire to do. You mentioned this culture and globalization and related challenges. The thing about hiring around the world is that it doesn't matter if you hire a Polish person or an Indian person, because it's kind of a distribution. You may have amazing Polish people who are a cultural fit for your company and Polish people that are not. The same thing with Indians. As a company, you need to find the distribution that matches the profile and the people that you want in your company. These things take a lot of time. But we’re not focused on how you look. It's more about whether you care about your craft or not. Do you want to become better? Do you have a growth mindset? Do you communicate well? So a lot of times if you define your culture and it is close to these general human values, then it's not going to diverge a lot, because a great craft person from Poland will look very similar to a great craft person from Russia or any other part of the world. Maybe Russian and Polish people are similar. But you get the point.”
VIII. Bootstrapping can be a viable path to success. Doist has built a successful business without relying on outside investment.
“Before I started Todoist I had a social network startup. It was VC funded. We had an investment. But I had a bad experience with that model of building companies. I had a bad experience with one of the big Silicon Valley venture firms. I was about to raise a seed round for Todoist but one of the first things they wanted to do was to replace me as the CEO. Maybe it is different for other people but the experience I had with the venture community wasn't positive. So I just said I'm going to do this myself. That was part of the reason.”
IX. Don't be afraid to compete with larger companies. Smaller, nimble companies can often outmaneuver their larger rivals.
“This isn't a zero-sum game. The markets are huge. You could never have such huge markets in human history. This idea of competition I think is kind of flawed. I don't think much about competition. I'm just focused on our execution, creating something that people love, and also being passionate about what we do. Because I think that's what matters at the end of the day. The other aspects like craftsmanship and mastery are super critical as well. In technology and many other fields, it's not about capital or how many people you have or resources you have. If it was, you would not be able to compete with super-rich companies, or with companies that have a lot of people. I think you can be a smaller company and still compete because being small has a lot of leverage. A lot of the time, you can be more efficient being a smaller, nimbler company.”
X. Focus on building a world-class team, rather than simply growing headcount. Doist believes that quality trumps quantity when it comes to talent.
“I think more about it in light of building world-class teams, like a sports team, than building like this big factory. For me, it's more about finding the best players, helping them grow, and creating the context where they can perform the best. That is kind of the secret formula. There are companies with thousands of people where the majority is mediocre. My way of looking at this is that I think there's a sweet spot where you find some great people, and provide them the context of performing well as a team. Given that there's so much leverage in technology, and especially, right now with the tools that we have, a lot of times it can be inefficient to have a lot of people. A few smart people who are motivated can beat a lot of people that are not motivated or like are mediocre at their craft. That's how I see it.”
